Illo drift

I have been very much neglectful of my blog recently, I think I have a good enough excuse now. I think my excuse might be teething; at least, his gum is a good deal whiter and pointier than every before. Anyway, to cut to the chase I haven't had much time for Illo Friday-ing, despite having some good ideas for some of the challenges. It's a bit sad, so I went into my archives and dug out a few drift like pictures. I came up with this sketch book page:





The photo (of my niece, dressing herself in seaweed like a swap thing) opens out, so I'm rather afraid you can't see the full paragraph detailing why Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen is an idiot for saying 'there are no straight lines in nature' but let it be know there are, and he is an idiot.

The main sketch is comparing the the natural formation of the Needles with Hurst Castle opposite it. It because the basis for this painting. It's always good to return to ones old sketchbooks in times of drought, I find, one of the reasons I consider maintaining a journal is important to me. Lounging by the sea is also important to me- and swimming in it. Luckily certain toothy monsters agree with me on this point. Anyway, that's the sea, if you get my drift.

Illo parade

Crafting 365: Maggies pies n shakespeare, originally uploaded by Champignons.

Here we are then, seven magpies. I'm thinking that's almost enough to make a parade, perhaps. I don't know. I was saving this up, thinking, sooner or later this would be and ideal illo for a friday; people would flock to congratulate me on my prompt interpretation and I would feel very smug indeed. However, here is a list of things that have NOT been an illustration friday topic in the last 4 months or so:

sorrow,joy,girl,boy,silver,gold,secrets never to be told.

If any of these come up in the future, I shall be very upset indeed.

But anyway, I like this print- there are two versions of it, and a book- and I have even managed to list it (on etsy, and soon on ehive, which I have recently opened). I'm desperately trying to think of interesting things to say, but I seem to be suffering some kind of severe caffeine withdrawal so you'll just have to imagine something witty is written here

_______________insert funny stuff here______________________

Woooo thankyou

Vote, originally uploaded by Champignons.

A belated thankyou for anyone that voted for me in the etsy vote- I wasn't expecting any votes so I didn't bother to campaign but look- I appear to have come second! Woo hoo! thank you :D

And I have been lucky enough to be featured in these beautiful blog posts recently too:

stimulatedmind
herlibraryadventures.blogspot.com

check em out, if you haven't

Plus oooooh- it's my 100th blog post!

On more distressing notes, I have not been able to get so much done* (on the computer, anyway) as my monitor seems to have decided that red is a bad colour that it wants noting to do with. If you look in my store you might note that red is a colour of which I am particularly fond, and so not being able to see it impacts my ability to work on the computer somewhat. The screen also has an amazing cyan hue, that has lent an underwater feel to my screen, and given me a strange tic under my left eye. yay

*this is a shame as I really need to make money to pay for the new monitor..

impossible?

impossible?, originally uploaded by Champignons.

Is it an impossibility? I hope not, though sometimes my faith is shaken. Still, I solider on.
What seems to be impossible to me is that it is Friday already! I feel like I just uploaded my last illo. Perhaps its because of the many distractions I face right now, what with it being Easter holidays and being unable to find a sticker in my development book that say 'first learnt to vomit through the bars of the crib so he doesn't have to lie in the wet patch'. I've had to make do with 'first rolled over*'. ho hum.

You can see the other side of the page here: - and no, I still haven't released threads issue 2, another impossibility...

*in order to chunder on the floor.

illo fleeting

illo fleeting, originally uploaded by Champignons.

This is mostly a testament to the crows on Southampton common, that flee as soon as you turn a camera on them, no matter how close they come in search of scraps of food. The buggers. This fellow is not a crow; he is a rook that I met at Stonehenge, who had the great advantage of staying still for a few minutes (whilst singing me a song of sorts; while technically lacking, no one has taken the trouble to sing to me before, so I appreciated his squawks none the less).

Anyway, you will notice this picture is unfinished- this is because at the moment, my spare time is fleeting. My little munchkin is keeping me busy, indeed. Happy Friday.

Illo celebrate

Boys and girls, originally uploaded by Champignons.

One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy...

Illo friday is celebrate, because someone had a baby. That's something nice to celebrate, I hope to do it myself in the next couple of weeks.. in the meantime, I will be shutting up shops and taking some chill time- another super thing to celebrate, if you ask me.

So these are birth announcement cards. I did them for both sexes in both brown and white (so 4 sets of cards in total). If you haven't guessed, the whole pink/blue thing doesn't wash with me. My sister offered me some grobags if it was a girl (strangely these are not full of cheap compost and you are no allowed to plant your baby and wander off and leave it) and I have to say, they are only going to be worn in bed, they don't have a specific, I don't know, vagina hatch or anything, and boy willies don't drop off if they wear pink (not that I would dress a boy in pink on purpose. Its all about being cheap). Likewise girls don't grow willies if you dress them in blue.

In fact, I'm pretty much sure (or hoping, anyway) babies, when adult, do not remember all the terrible things we accidentally or purposefully do to them blundering our way through their early infancy, and won't even remember the I candy apple designer buggy that cost you 800 quid, though they might wonder why they have no college fund. Ho de hum. Good luck, new parents everywhere.

illo.. climb

moon-hare thaumotrope, originally uploaded by Champignons.

I was thinking of a song for this topic, It's by the eels and called 'climbing to the moon'. I'm on a bit of a bender at the moment, a thaumatrope bender, in fact, i have pretty much decided to become a thaumatrope artist, and make my millions becoming a leader in a very, very limited field**

Sadly I have been thwarted by a complete lack of interest in thaumatrope-related artwork in the rest of the world; still anything I draw must be twissleable (which is a special word I have made up pertaining to thaumatrope).

So climbing to to moon took me to hares because hares are luntics and we all know that they live in the moon so it was an obvious choice. So I made this little thaumatrope. I hope you like it.

*A thaumatrope is a Victorian toy that had an image painted on each side which combines to produce one image when twissled due to an optical illusion called the persistence of vision. And if that isn't cool enough, Johnny Depp had one in 'Sleepy hollow' and I love him.

**This worked well in my Dphil, where I rapidly because a world expert in measuring radium on ICP-MS, if not only because no one else wanted to do that.